


Escape

by laireshi



Category: Iron Man (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-25 19:54:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17127707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: Tony Stark is tired of rebuilding. He finds escape the way he usually does, down at the bottom of the bottle . . . But it's okay. It's safe this time. Virtual reality isn't, after all, real.





	Escape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ironlawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/gifts).



> Happy Holidays!
> 
> I've gotten your prompts shortly after reading the solicits for Tony Stark: Iron Man #9 and I knew I had to do something.
> 
> (For anyone's not familiar with it: "You’re not really wearing a jetpack, user. It’s a game. You’re not really shooting someone and stealing their car, user. It’s just a game. You’re not really taking that drink, Tony Stark...")
> 
> Tony's VR system is called eScape in the comics, which is really fitting.

“It’s not real.”

(Tony _had been_ an artificial intelligence being for a time; nothing but a string of code and data scattered across multiple secure servers; does it mean he wasn’t real then? Can he say he’s real _now_?)

Questions, questions, never answers, isn’t it the story of his life, isn’t that why he kept looking for the answers at the bottom on the bottle? Hadn’t he _found_ them?

He’s tired, too tired to continue—

He knows what’s real: the minibar in his office and the cool bottles of water and cans of energy drinks for when coffee isn’t enough and the bottle of vodka hidden at the back. A reminder, like a lover’s promise, _I’ll always stay with you_.

(He _had been_ drunk as said artificial intelligence, too.)

He’s not holding a bottle. He’s not holding _anything_ , submerged as he is in eScape. He’s not drinking, either. Not even Iron Man can feed on data.

The taste isn’t real, but it is striking. Familiar. The functions responsible for the illusion are perfect.

And later, later the world goes just a bit softer around the edges, nicer, easier, like a layer of warm fog between him and the rest of it.

It’s not real, because nothing in here is.

(Later still, and he loses his balance and laughs and he can’t form words and everything swims in front of his eyes—

He turns off the program.)

He takes the eScape mask off.

He stretches.

He’s not hungover. Why would he be? He hasn’t drunk, not really.

***

Tony walks around the Stark Unlimited headquarters. Rhodey’s away, happily testing the Manticore. Everything’s in order: some employees are working, others are relaxing before tackling the next issue, there are team meetings behind glass walls and friends eating together in the cafeteria.

Their financial results are good, people all over the world are awaiting their next innovations, the research into green energy is going great.

There’s nothing missing, not really. He’s not _rebuilding_ ; he’s rebuilt already after that last disaster, after Steve had been brainwashed and Tony hadn’t noticed until it was too late. It’s not surprised: if Tony can be trusted to do something, it’s to fuck up first and rebuild later. Better. Stronger. Different.

He’s tired of rebuilding.

He just wants to rest, but he doesn’t even know what that means anymore.

People expect him to be Iron Man and to be a futurist, and Tony _is_ both, doesn’t know how not to be, but he’s just _Tony Stark_ , too, not a genius superhero but a man who’s just rebooted his body and he’s not sure he can even deal with expectations.

Everything’s too bright and too dark at once, sharp edges to cut himself on where he can’t see and dull greyness where he looks for inspiration.

Sometimes, he just wants to be able to press a _pause_ button on life and switch it back on once he remembers how to breathe. Just an option to slow down would help.

He goes back to his office, removed and secure in the open-space building. He locks the door.

The VR mask is like a friendly hug and the world it opens to him is _his_.

A place to rest, to relax, to unwind; a place to start anew; a place with no consequence because it’s _not real_.

(The bottle is already in his hand when the virtual reality around him finishes loading.)

***

Contrary to what it might seem like if anyone knew what Tony is up to, he’s not in denial.

He knows he’s an addict.

He remembers it every night when he can’t sleep. He remembers it every time he wants to smash the mirror he’s looking at. He remembers it every time he drinks water and he misses another taste.

He’s an addict, and if it’s not alcohol he’s indulging in at the moment, then it’s Iron Man: the rush of adrenaline in a fight, the exhilaration of flight.

But this, what he’s doing now, is not _dangerous_. He’s not harming anyone, not even himself. (Shame.)

Other people do yoga to de-stress, he puts on the VR glasses.

It’s fine.

( _Then why don’t you tell Steve what you’re doing, you coward?_ he thinks viciously at himself when he disconnects and the easy fog of digital intoxication disappears.

 _It’s not like that_ , he thinks, _it’s not, but Steve wouldn’t understand._ )

***

The Avengers meeting is running long. By now it’s not really a strategy meeting so much as gossiping and teasing, and Tony’s tired.

He wants to go home. He wants to put on the VR glasses. He wants to forget.

He _likes_ making new equipment for the Avengers, but there’s so much that he has to do, so much depending on how he does it, and what if he messes up? What if he’s not good enough.

There’s no fear of that inside his game, just the promise of a light buzz and no worries.

Someone shakes his arm, gently, and Tony blinks and realises Jan’s waving her hand in front of his face.

“An armour update idea?” Steve asks and Tony realises he’s shaken him out of his thoughts.

“Something like that,” Tony says sheepishly. Steve still hasn’t removed his hand, and Tony’s not cold, but Steve’s touch is still a point of pleasant warmth at his arm.

 _Addictive personality_ , he thinks, and he doesn’t dare imagine what would become of him if Steve ever kissed him.

***

The good thing is no one else would be able to use the eScape Interface to do what Tony does. His body, programmed to be the perfect controller for the Iron Man armour, is the only thing able to interact with virtual systems like that, allow the system to fool him into _actually_ believing he’s drunk.

Another time, it’d scare the shit out of him.

But when the illusion of taste is perfect enough to slow down his thoughts, he’s not scared of anything, and that’s just the point.

Somewhere between the SHRA, the incursions, his morality being inverted out and Steve turned into a monster, Tony’s crossed the point at which he could just _deal with things_.

But it’s okay, because he’s not hurting anyone here.

He takes the glasses off when the obligatory warning about spending too much time inside the game flickers at him—he really should program it out of his version—and sees his Avengers card blinking.

He hasn’t heard the call.

His blood runs cold and he calls for his armour, but as he does so the notification disappears.

So they handled it successfully without him. That’s good.

( _They don’t need you_ , a voice in his head whispers _, no one does_.)

***

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, “I’m sorry, I—”

_SorrysorrysorrypleaseforgivemeI’msorry_

“It’s okay,” Steve says from his hospital bed, smiling despite how pale he is. “Those things happen.”

“I should’ve been there,” Tony argues, because _they handled it successfully_ means _a monster from another dimension ran its claws through Captain America’s uniform like it was silk and cut him from hipbone to clavicle._

Steve’s fine now. The wound wasn’t that deep, apparently, he’s head transfusion, and he heals fast.

How could Tony _not_ have been there?

“Tell you what, Shellhead,” Steve says. “They’re letting me out tomorrow. Go to a dinner with me and we’re even.”

And Tony thinks, _I can’t_ , and he says, “Okay,” because Steve’s hurt and he’s asking and it’s Tony’s fault they’re even here, and he can’t make it up to Steve, but he _can_ not argue with him in the hospital.

“Good,” Steve says, and he adds, “It’s a date,” staring at Tony like he’s facing a strategic problem, and Tony’s sure he’s misheard, except—

Except—

He’s already said, _yes_ , and he wants it, he wants a real date with Steve so very much.

It’ll ruin him, he knows, when Steve inevitably throws him away. This love, Tony has always known, will destroy him.

“Okay,” he repeats, and echoes Steve’s smile.

(He’s an addict. He can’t say no.)

***

It should’ve been a wake-up call, but that’s the issue with guilt: Tony knows he deserves every drop of it and still wants to escape it.

He goes to his office and powers up his computer, the eScape mask already prepared on his desk, and when his screen blinks, _Welcome_ , Tony breathes a sigh of relief.

He opens the mini-bar and he picks a bottle of vodka: not his favourite by a long shot, but he doesn’t deserve the good, rich taste of whiskey.

Then he just drinks.

He doesn’t visualise another environment around him, he doesn’t dream of another world. He just wants to feel _better_.

It doesn’t work: he only feels worse, worse and worse and worse, and then he doesn’t feel anything at all.

***

He wakes up with a headache pounding behind his eyes and a foul taste in his mouth. He blinks a few times before his eyes focus, and then he sees it: the empty bottle on his desk, the dark screen of his computer, and the eScape Interface mask, switched off next to the keyboard.

The nausea hits him, and he leans over the paperbin as he heaves.

 _The switched-off interface_ , he thinks, like a knife cutting the fog around his brain.

Tears streak down his face, and for a moment he wants nothing more than to smash the bottle and take the shards to his veins.

He’s an addict.

He can no longer say, _it’s only a game, it’s not real_.

(It’s always been real.)

***

This will make him or destroy him, he knows, as he stares down a bottle of whiskey.

He opens it, slowly, the shape of it too familiar in his hand. The smell hits him like a punch as he raises it.

He _doesn’t_ want to drink it. He wants to upend it over the kitchen sink and pour it away.

He’s tired of fighting, and if he drinks it, he’ll never have to fight again.

His phone rings. Tony sets the bottle carefully down as he looks at it.

Steve.

That’s right. Tony’s late for their date.

He mutes the call.

He looks at the bottle again.

He slides down to the floor.

His fingers shake.

      to: Steve Rogers

21:31 _come to an AA meeting with me_


End file.
